A Wind in the Door Read Online Free PDF Page B

you why he has to go rushing off to Brookhaven, or is it another of those top-secret classified things?”
    Mrs. Murry looked down at the checked tablecloth, and at the remains of an equation which had not come out in the wash; doodling equations on anything available was a habit of which she could not break her husband. “It’s not really secret. There’ve been several bits about it in the papers recently.”
    “About what?” Sandy asked.
    “There’s been an unexplainable phenomenon, not in our part of the galaxy, but far across it, and in several other galaxies—well, the easiest way to explain it is that our new supersensitive sonic instruments have been picking up strange sounds, sounds which aren’t on any
normal register, but much higher. After such a sound—a cosmic scream, the Times rather sensationally called it—there appears to be a small rip in the galaxy.”
    “What does that mean?” Dennys asked.
    “It seems to mean that several stars have vanished.”
    “Vanished where?”
    “That’s the odd part. Vanished. Completely. Where the stars were there is, as far as our instruments can detect, nothing. Your father was out in California several weeks ago, you remember, at Mount Palomar.”
    “But things can’t just vanish,” Sandy said. “We had it in school—the balance of matter.”
    Their mother added, very quietly, “It seems to be getting unbalanced.”
    “You mean like the ecology?”
    “No. I mean that matter actually seems to be being annihilated.”
    Dennys said flatly, “But that’s impossible.”
    “E = MC 2 ,” Sandy said. “Matter can be converted into energy, and energy into matter. You have to have one or the other.”
    Mrs. Murry said, “Thus far, Einstein’s law has never been disproved. But it’s coming into question.”
    “Nothingness—” Dennys said. “That’s impossible.”
    “One would hope so.”
    “And that’s what Father’s going off about?”

    “Yes, to consult with several other scientists, Shasti from India, Shen Shu from China—you’ve heard of them.”
    Outside the dining-room windows came a sudden brilliant flash of light, followed by a loud clap of thunder. The windows rattled. The kitchen door burst open. Everybody jumped.
    Meg sprang up, crying nervously, “Oh, Mother—”
    “Sit down, Meg. You’ve heard thunder before.”
    “You’re sure it’s not one of those cosmic things?”
    Sandy shut the door.
    Mrs. Murry was calmly reassuring. “Positive. They’re completely inaudible to human ears.” Lightning flashed again. Thunder boomed. “As a matter of fact, there are only two instruments in the world delicate enough to pick up the sound, which is incredibly high-pitched. It’s perfectly possible that it’s been going on for billennia, and only now are our instruments capable of recording it.”
    “Birds can hear sounds way above our normal pitch,” Sandy said, “I mean, way up the scale, that we can’t hear at all.”
    “Birds can’t hear this.”
    Dennys said, “I wonder if snakes can hear as high a pitch as birds?”
    “Snakes don’t have ears,” Sandy contradicted.

    “So? They feel vibrations and sound waves. I think Louise hears all kinds of things out of human range. What’s for dessert?”
    Meg’s voice was still tense. “We don’t usually have thunderstorms in October.”
    “Please calm down, Meg.” Mrs. Murry started clearing the table. “If you’ll stop and think, you’ll remember that we’ve had an unseasonable storm for every month in the year.”
    Sandy said, “Why does Meg always exaggerate everything? Why does she have to be so cosmic? What’s for dessert?”
    “I don’t—” Meg started defensively, then jumped as the rain began to pelt against the windows.
    “There’s some ice cream in the freezer,” Mrs. Murry said. “Sorry, I haven’t been thinking about desserts.”
    “Meg’s supposed to make desserts,” Dennys said. “Not that we expect pies or anything, Meg, but even you